Crossing Cultures (Poorly) -- Randy Chen

I suppose I learned today that being American doesn't always matter. But I learned other stuff too.

I was finishing my day at Benjamin Franklin Elementary School, sitting on the steps where the kids board their buses to go home. I appreciated the moment of repose—it was a long day trekking from museum to museum in the French Quarter trying to keep an eye on all 25 children who were all clearly exhilarated to be out of the classroom.

And then I saw a boy, about ten, teasing a smaller boy, about seven, heckling him and shoving him around. The larger boy stood up tall to maximize the height difference, puffed out his chest, and pulled his backpack up his back by the straps with his elbows out, and jutted his bottom lip out in one impressive picture of intimidation and to all this, the smaller boy slunk away.

Feeling the wisdom of the twenty one years in me rise up, I decided to address this. I barked at the older boy who was smirking and proudly relishing his newly acquired power wrought from pushing down someone weaker. I chastised his inconsideration of feelings and admonished him for bullying someone smaller than him.

And to all this he stared at me, considering me for a minute before replying with nothing but a sneer and a quip: “You Chinese,” delivered with the warped inflection of a mimicked accent. Oh, and, of course, he concluded with a requisite mock kung-fu pose with one open palm outstretched facing downward somewhat reminiscent (or so I’m told) of a crane.

Obviously, this is an unfortunate happenstance of cultural insensitivity. I should be angry about having the accent which my own parents speak in mocked with a sing-song tone of condescending derision, I should be livid that all I was to this kid was some misconceived extension that he had gleaned from kung-fu movies and that anything I had to say was null, void, and silly in light of this ancestral caricature of presumed heritage.

So I opened my mouth to say something in response and that’s when words failed me. What could I say? A harsh retort would only make him more hostile. A firm explanation of why what he said was wrong would only make him more resentful (and he only had a few minutes before he caught his bus—hardly the time to bring up a conversation about racism, especially with a ten year old). Understanding, it seemed, couldn’t possibly be squeezed into today’s agenda.

I ended up saying something vague around the lines of, “You can’t say those things,” to which the kid just stared at me indignantly and turned around to board his bus. Clearly, I didn’t get through.

It’s funny when situations in life rise up and you know exactly, at that instant, what the right thing to do is, but within the context of the strict contract between morals and their execution, the closest action to being right is simply nothing.

And it’s frustrating to no end.